Blog Post

Glitter is a symbol inseparable from our Queer history. Countless ancestors have adorned themselves with glitter at Pride parades, drag shows, and just to make us happy in our day-to-day lives. Glitter is emblematic of our utter fabulousness and shine (though we concede that some folks in our community detest it with as much passion as others of us love it). Its notorious staying power is also a reflection of our tenacity as a people. (Can you ever get glitter out of anything? Not really.)

Today we celebrate the LGBTQ+ Christians who you may see rocking a glitter cross on their foreheads because of Glitter Ash Wednesday, organized annually by Parity NYC. They call this movement a proclamation and reclamation of faith, and for me, it also represents a beautifully powerful protest statement to any who would try to deny the validity of a Christian identity for LGBTQ+ people.

Ash Wednesday is one of the most popular and important holy days in the Christian calendar marking the beginning of the Lenten season, a time geared towards spiritual introspection and self-work. The traditional ashen cross reminds us that death comes for us all (ash to ash, dust to dust), and it literally marks us as part of a collective body of believers.

For Queer and Trans people, the precarious and precious nature of life is often all too real. We as Queer People bear “marks”, often not of our own choosing, so acts of self-pronouncement through things like glitter, drag, and queer campiness, are ways that we can “come out” and name and reclaim ourselves.

Combining glitter and ash on Ash Wednesday is a powerful statement: In mixing these two distinguishing markers of Queerness and Christianity, we proclaim that the identities and faith of Queer Christians are authentic, and that the ways we express ourselves and our lived realities won’t be suppressed.

To me, the cross that resembles an “x” on one’s forehead reminds me of an X that marks the spot of our pain, our bodies that receive the harm of white Christian Supremacy and incorporates it into our beings. Using glitter to make that X into a queer protest of the wound of Christian Supremacy on our bodies, says, “This mark that is supposed to represent belonging to a body of people, the Church, marks our exclusion from this belonging because of this other identity that is also freely given by God.” In the act of bearing the glitter ash cross or X, we name ourselves and the wounds of the exclusion and spiritual violence of the Church, and we protest the ways we have falsely been marked as wrong, evil, outside the family and the will of God.

In James Cone’s book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, Cone posits that until we theologically understand the sacred bodies that are being crucified on the Cross today – Black bodies, Queer bodies, immigrant bodies, women’s bodies – then we won’t be able to truly understand this thing called the Cross, or the Christ. We need to understand that the institutions and ideologies of Empire that crucified Christ are the same powers that are crucifying marginalized bodies now.

As someone who identifies as a Queer Latinx Feminist and a Christian I imagine myself adorned in glitter ash in an act of resistance to the systems that tell me I cannot exist; that my body is not welcome, that my soul does not belong the faith that raised me. And at the same time, I am naming the wounds that come from the violence stemming from the collusion between the State and Christianity and the Church, and I am naming my truth and my most authentic (and fabulous Queer femme) self. There are many of us. We continue to grow in numbers and audacity as we carve out space for Queer Christians and lay claim to our own sacred bodies and truths. We will not be silenced, and we will not uphold the white Christian Supremacy that kills our bodies and our souls.

There is something inherently joyful about the sight and smell of cupcakes, isn’t there? The moment you see them you can’t help but think of happy memories, innocence, and times of celebration.

It’s in this positive connotation of cupcakes that the Right has cloaked their messages of white Christian Supremacy.

October 9th is National Cupcake Day, a day when the anti-abortion movement organizes events nationwide to propagate their worldview on consent, pregnancy, and reproductive health. One prominent group, Cupcakes for Life, encourages children from middle and high school to give out cupcakes to honor “the birthdays of the babies that were never born”.

The rhetorical strategy behind the use of cupcakes is that they serve as a non-confrontational way to spread their “pro-life” message. Though this sort of event may seem harmless to most, there is a deeper ideological problem that exists underneath those layers of icing.

National Cupcake Day leaves a bad taste in our mouths – as do similar events such as the March for Life and 40 Days for Life – because they paint their movements as morally righteous, associated with the parts of our culture that value innocence, childhood, and life. This strategy has been a successful one for the anti-abortion movement, as their messaging claims a benign, moralistic high-ground. It appeals to a sense of justice that calls on us to defend life.

But we know that pro-life narratives are heavily rooted in racism, xenophobia, and misogyny. In understanding the history and implications of these narratives we can further observe the violent ideologies that still exist within these ideologies today.

Looking back to the 19th century – a period of time when abortion was largely unregulated – abortion in the United States was a reproductive health option that was available to women of every race and class status. The ability of women to get these procedures would become a great concern to patriarchal power structures. The United States would go on to experience many waves of immigration throughout the century, and the backlash to this migration moment inadvertently created the perfect conditions for patriarchy and xenophobia to mold the pro-life movement.

The primary concern of abortion to white men during this time were two-fold: bodily autonomy of women and immigration. White men were highly concerned with women’s ability to have bodily autonomy interfering with the patriarchal duties of bearing and raising children. Then with the large influx of immigrants, continuing abortions at high rates would mean white people becoming the minority. These fears were used by the American Medical Association as the rallying force behind abortion regulations. The AMA was founded in 1847, and historically prevented Black doctors from joining their association on the basis of race and also because many Black doctors came from schools that admitted women. This led Black doctors to form a separate association: the National Medical Association.

The formation of the American Medical Association and their partnership with legislative powers in the United States allowed for the monopolization of women’s bodies. With this monopoly on women’s health came the necessity for eliminating potential competitors. Immediately Black women were driven out of women’s health services and their fields of expertise, namely midwifery, were blocked from participating in the medical field. The existence of midwifery was a threat to the patriarchal dominance white men had within the field of childbirth. The reason for targeting midwives specifically was because midwifery was dominated by Black and Indigenous midwives. In the 20th century, Dr. Joseph DeLee, a preeminent 20th century obstetrician, would address in a 1915 speech titled “Progress Toward Ideal Obstetrics”:

“The midwife is a relic of barbarism. In civilized countries the midwife is wrong, has always been wrong. The midwife has been a drag on the progress of the science and art of obstetrics. Her existence stunts the one and degrades the other. For many centuries she perverted obstetrics from obtaining any standing at all among the science of medicine. Even after midwifery was practiced by some of the most brilliant men in the profession, such practice was held opprobrious and degraded.”

At the core of these attacks against Black and Indigenous midwives was the desire for white supremacy to dominate the practices of obstetrics.

The pro-life movement would maintain its racist ideologies past the 19th century and into the Civil Rights era. In a time where our movements were winning, and public services like schools were being integrated by force of law and segregationist theologies fell out of mainstream popularity, white conservative Christians needed an issue to organize voters around that would sustain their white supremacist political interests, but still preserve their sense of moral high ground.

The founders of the Religious Right political movement found that abortion tested better than any other social issue as a hot-button topic that galvanized small groups of evangelicals to become politically active, and set out on an ideological campaign to popularly radicalize the subject of abortion and liken the Roe v. Wade ruling – which had been law for five years prior to this campaign – to “moral decay”. By the end of their campaign, they had organized a new “Moral Majority” around outlawing/criminalizing abortion, and the popular theological tides turned to support this anti-abortion, anti-choice stance of the so-called “New Right”.

Today the pro-life movement still exists as a vehicle for the sustainment of white Christian Supremacy. It simply hides itself in cupcakes and other benign symbols. It’s in reflecting on this history that we are able to see how the evangelical position on immigration, border security, and the cutting of food assistance programs are in direct contradiction to the idea of a “pro-life” society.

At the end of the day, reproductive justice isn’t just about abortion. It’s about the ability of all people to maintain agency over their own lives. It’s about valuing the entirety of one’s life, not just the nine months of gestation. It’s about access to healthcare for all people.

Though events such as National Cupcake Day and the March for Life are designed to appear non-confrontational, the history of these groups paints an entirely different picture for People of Color, Women, and immigrants. It’s when we acknowledge these histories that we are able to have honest conversations with one another about the impact of white Christian Supremacy in our lives. We can’t afford to sugarcoat oppression with the use of cupcakes.

Sources:

“The Real Origins of the Religious Right,” Politico. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/

“The Racist History of Abortion and Midwifery Bans,” ACLU. The Racist History of Abortion and Midwifery Bans (aclu.org)

Sometimes healing and ancestor work is just plain hard. It’s great when we can light a candle and call on a beloved we remember fondly or someone we love and admire. Even in the pain of loud and grief, we can touch the powerful love that evokes such pain. I’m so grateful for the amplification we get when we can tap into the positive energy they offer us from beyond the veil.

But. Not. All. Ancestors. Are. Like. That.

I have been working towards peace with my ancestors on generational wounds for several years now. It’s intense. It spans centuries and continents, some information is impossible to find; most things are just about following my feelings and intuition about where the work goes next.

Some of our ancestors are beloved and wonderful or strong and bold leaders. That’s great. But what is also true is that all of us have ancestors that weren’t very good people, others who were wrecked with their own traumas, and many of us come from legacies of violence and the weight of oppression bearing down on the necks of our ancestors for generations. It’s a lot.

I’m currently working through my new relationship with my recently-deceased, estranged father… i.e. nobody I want close, and yet, here I am with the ashes and my ancestors telling me *in my body* about getting into the right relationship and my duties to ancestors.

I feel annoyed and frustrated: Why do I have to do this difficult, painful work of healing? I complain about it. A lot. And every time I do I get back the same answer, from my healer friends, from my partner, from my best friend, from the spirit world… They say, “Why you? Because you can, that’s why!”

Because I have been blessed with community and resources and personal fortitude. And because I have done my work to get this far, I find that there is always more, harder work to do.

“It isn’t fair that I have to do the work because he didn’t!” I complained to my healthcare clinician recently. She responded with a shoulder shrug and an Italian saying from her father in the old country, “Those who are born with broad shoulders help carry other people’s loads. This is how the village survives.” Worse than that she reminded me what we all know is true: if we don’t do the work to heal the wounds, the pain will fall to the next generation to solve.

This is how I think about the work of sabotaging white Christian Supremacy. Not all of us have the fortitude or safety to be out. Not all of us can take on white Christian Supremacy head on in public, but those of who can, should.

So many of our people still don’t know that the violence and spiritual terrorism waged against us and our ancestors are rooted, not in the Divine, but in the false gods of patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, and domination. These idols who steal the language, Scripture, and culture of Christianity and twist them into weapons of violence and death.

All of us who know the Truth can do the hard but incredibly important work of healing our own hearts and communities from religion-based spiritual violence by disbelieving the lies of white Christian Supremacy and rewiring our hearts and actions to represent life abundant for all Creation, leaving shame and fear behind.

In this time of year, when the veil is thin and we remember those who have gone ahead into the cloud of witnesses, may we remember that just like trauma, healing also works across generations. This is my time to heal; it’s my work because I have been given what I need to be able to do it. And, I do not walk alone. We are never alone.

There continues to be a lot to process after the shooting in Atlanta last month. Tragedy and grief continue to stack and yet we trudge forward. Many of us are numb and exhausted and the thought of one more zoom meeting alone is enough to make us want to disappear forever. 

It feels easy to become inundated with fear that nothing will change. Tragedy in tow, our capitalistic culture insists on moving at a pace that is incredibly harmful. Our central nervous systems are wrecked by the continuous uncertainty of the pandemic, plus one traumatic event after another. Even the little things, like doing the dishes, feel overwhelming and unmanageable. It has become very obvious to me that we will not survive if we continue on in this way. I have been taking a lot of naps, eating a lot of indulgent food, and watching a lot of RuPaul’s Drag Race (a very problematic, guilty pleasure, I know).

I want to lift up the legacy of Black and Asian solidarity and a term used by one of my heroes Grace Lee Boggs that guides me and gives me hope: solutionary. Reconciling an entire white christian supremacist world rightfully feels daunting and unattainable. I witness so many organizers burn themselves out or stay spinning in spirals of unresolved rage. And while rage is righteous, rage alone won’t save us. We also need rest, resolve, laughter, and replenishment if we’re going to be in this fight together for the long haul.

To me, a solutionary approach is to find what is solvable, what is doable, what is attainable in the moment in order to remain in the movement. It’s also employing our innovation and creativity and trusting that change is possible, and that we have everything we need within us and around us to dismantle oppression and build a new world. 

I have learned that I feel the most empowered when I take responsibility for my own actions, my own rest, and my own energy. I am further empowered when I believe that my participation in my community is important. And that I am where I am today because I am part of a collective. We have to believe these things; these must be our inherent truths. And we must become unshakeable in these beliefs. 

At Soulforce, we have never shied away from confronting hate and harm head on. And in my personal life, I know that I am most available to provide support and fight back when I am grounded and well-rested. This isn’t always the case; I’m definitely guilty of not drinking enough water, doom scrolling, and coping in many other non-generative ways. But if I travel down that route too far, I instinctually begin to feel as though I have lost my way. I am called to do much more in the world than witness life happening around me through twitter or the tv screen. I am called to be very active in the overthrow of that which keeps us from being free. 

I feel very in alignment with Soulforce’s charge to face oppression head on, and I believe naming the sources of harm clearly and unapologetically is a central strategy to our healing.

There is no question that white Christian supremacist rhetoric and purity culture emboldened the shooter in Atlanta to do what he did. The united states’ legacies of imperialism, xenophobia, and stigmatization of sex workers made the gunman feel like murder was a perfectly logical and morally justifiable action because Asian women, whether actual or perceived participants in sex work, were a ‘temptation’ that needed to be ‘eliminated.’

This is heart wrenching. How do we reconcile a world where a white guy having a ‘bad day’ feels justified to murder eight people because he felt sexually tempted and repressed? (A lot of deep breaths, punching pillows, and screaming into the void to start.) Because how do you undo such deep seeded messages of hatred and entitlement? It honestly feels like too much. 

But after I’ve had a nap, some good food, and I’ve calmed down my central nervous system, I can expand my purview and remember that the incident in Atlanta is nothing new and neither is our survival, or resistance, resilience, and solidarity. White Christian Supremacy that empowers white guys to kill when they have a bad day is fucking tired. White Christian Supremacy that inspires policy makers to write discrimination into the law is a long-employed strategy of the right. White Christian Supremacy that seeks to control the bodies of women, LGBTQ+, Black, Brown, and disabled people is baked into the foundation of the united states of america.

We have to name the sources of harm clearly and unapologetically. Whenever there is a mass shooting, many politicians respond with this is ‘unamerican.’ And that really makes me laugh. How can we say that a country that was founded on the enslavement of Africans and the genocide of Indigenous people is any different than what it built itself on? 

Although particularly insidious and shameful in its current iteration, exemplified by the numerous extremists who have made it into public office and the slew of bills attacking trans youth proposed this year, we have to remember that White Christian Supremacy is behaving this way because it’s fighting for its survival. This also means we’re making progress and the opposition is scared. As overwhelming as everything can feel right now, we have to remember that we have more tools of resistance available to us than ever. 

There’s a line a in a gorgeous video poem entitled “What came first, the fear or the virus?” by Jenevieve Ting & Jensen Reyes that states:

“If our hurt is connected, so too is our healing, so too is our holding, so too grows our capacity to stand together in the face of fear and render it into a formless fiction.” 

We are far more equipped to defeat the systems of oppression that plague our world than the fear-mongering tactics of the opposition would have us believe. 

White supremacy lies to us all. It divides and dehumanizes. White supremacy will tell us that it’s Black and Brown communities that are tearing each other apart and that we are ‘the violent threats of the world’ that need to be eliminated but in reality, it’s all of us (Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, AND white) that have the capacity to build and organize together to defeat the actual threat of white supremacy. 

Solidarity is our strength. I wrote a haiku that goes:

white supremacy 

lies to white people too, says, 

 ‘this is what white is.’

White supremacy will tell us that there isn’t room for your humanity and mine. White supremacy leaves room for no humanity at all. 

I have been devastated by every mass shooting and police killing that has happened. I don’t need to be Black, disabled, Jewish, Latinx, or a family member of a gunned down child to grieve the loss of those lives.

We should be seeing ourselves, our humanity in each other, and not in a way that is toxically positive or imposing, but one that is deeply connected and reverent of each other. White Christian supremacy will tell us that dominance, hierarchy, and suffering are the only way humans can exist. But we know this is a treacherous lie.

There is room for all of us. There is space for your humanity and mine. Healing and transformation is possible. And there is plenty of time to rest and take care of ourselves and each other so we have the collective will to keep going and create a different world.

I will close with two other lines from the poem I mentioned earlier by Jenevieve Ting & Jensen Reyes:

“…we belong everywhere and we are the living embodiment of a thousand deaths and rebirths, shaped into a body that is still fighting to find a home.”

“We are not afraid because we are not the descendants of fear, we are the descendants of love, and of joy and of possibility and of promise.”

If you are in need of support or if you’re looking for ways to be in solidarity with Asian Pacific Islander communities, here are few resources I recommend:

Atlanta based organization, Asian Americans Advancing Justice is offering bystander training

RedCanarySong – Atlanta based organization supporting migrant sex workers

18MillionRising – National Asian American organization connecting communities through media

Asian Mental Health Collective 

January 16, 2021 – Rev. Alba Onofrio

Hey there Soulforce fam,

It’s a tense and tender time, and a lot of us in the United States are on edge about what may come this weekend. I want to take a moment to center in who we are, and why, we as a people of love, work for justice.

There have been many waves of political upheaval and violence over these last four years. It can be so overwhelming to our spirits that we may feel simultaneously, both a desire for peace and for justice. In these times, calls for unity can feel comforting.

However, unity without accountability is cheap grace, and it is a primary strategy of White Christian Supremacy.

This idea that you can do whatever you want, harm whomever, and then fall on your knees and pray to Jesus and all is then forgiven and you are pure again — that’s cheap grace, and that’s not how grace works! 

We cannot truly heal or find peace as a country without coming to terms with the origins of our nation, without acknowledging the Original Sin of White Christian Supremacy in what is now called these-here United States; without asking forgiveness, and even more importantly, making reparations for harm caused and changing the landscape for how we move forward together in community. 

Unity implies that we are all equal, or at the very least have the conditions for the possibility of equality. This is not currently our reality. And though we all may be equal in the eyes of Creator God, here on Earth we still have a lot of work to do!

As says Frederick Douglass, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” He says, “This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be moral and physical, but it must be a struggle.”

Now, I’m sure that’s exactly what some people who participated in the failed coup of January 6th believed they were doing. And there are plenty of other people, perhaps as many as the 74 million who voted for white supremacist patriarchy in the most recent election, who believe those insurrectionists were demanding justice from power because something has been taken from them, something has been stolen, some great wrong done. Their language sounds similar to ours in that way, but let me be clear about what is different from my vantage point–

It is indeed true that “they” are losing their power:

Those who believe in the supremacy of the white man above all others, those who feel God gave them the Earth and its people to exploit and dominate for their personal gain-

Those who pray to a white man-god jesus to “wash away their sins”, rather than seek salvation from the Original Sin of White Supremacy through reconciliation and restitution-

White Christian Supremacist institutions and the people who identify with them are losing. They are losing the hearts and minds of this nation and the world every single day. And they are losing their power over our lives. I truly believe this… if we continue to do our work to live, to love, to hustle, and to push for change.

As we keep watch in these next few days, we may continue to witness the distressing death rattle of expiring theologies and ideologies. In this difficult moment, let me remind you of this, in case it is helpful to you… to your soul, Beloved. Let me remind you of who you are, Dear One, who we are:

We are a people of love. We love each other, and we act from love as we seek justice and equality for all of Creation.

We are a people who do not accept cheap grace and believe it to be our salvation.

We believe in honesty, compassion, accountability, dignity, love, respect, community, and action. 

We believe that no one can flourish while White Christian Supremacy reigns. Even those with privilege suffer under toxic belief systems, in the degradation of their souls.

We create miracles from our love for each other. Even in this time of pandemic, we collectively have created change that, for many of us (myself included), blew our minds and expanded our hearts. Things I hadn’t been brave enough to hope for started happening at a new pace.

We took our love for the most vulnerable of us and organized community care in the form of mutual aid. Our people took our love for Black people and together we knocked down statues to white supremacy and confronted white supremacy in our systems, our communities, our churches. We took our love for each other and made sure we saw more marginalized people represented in our political systems than ever before.

We are working and winning in the legacy of love and hustle from Women, of People of Color, of Queers, of Southern organizers, all the organizers, and lovers, and families, and chosen families, and leaders, and everyday people. So let us understand that this hate-filled grasp for power is a response to our gains. 

We are indeed a dangerous people to the systems that seek our submission and demise, for we are claiming souls for justice every day as more and more of us awaken and stand ready to make the changes needed to build a world we want, the world our young ones deserve, our elders and ancestors before us dreamed. As they continue to make the way before us, it is our duty, our honor to continue on the path to Freedom.

We hope that you will keep your people close these days, and check up on each other. Know that even though we are distanced from one another, you are never alone. You belong to a people. We are in this thing together. Please take good care of your body and your spirit, alongside your love and care for one another. 

We here at Soulforce are sending you love, glimpses of freedom, and glitter sparkles of hope from our unicorn homes to yours.

With hearts ablaze and spirits unyielding,

Rev. Alba Onofrio

Equinox each year reminds me of balance, a reminder I need over and over again. It’s a call that I need especially this year when everything feels very extreme, very urgent, and so uncertain.

I’m thinking about how to maintain stability in my spirit with so much uncertainty about what’s to come. Part of keeping myself in balance for the long term is about creating stability and peace within my own self. And what I have learned during this pandemic time, when the world feels like it’s falling apart in so many different and unexpected ways, is that I actually have no idea what is to come.

There are many educated guesses about what might happen in the future, many people who are claiming they can predict certainties of what will eventually come to pass. But so much feels like it is being tossed up in the air with probabilities we cannot truly determine. And trying to prepare for all of them makes me utterly exhausted.

I worry that the outcome of this election in the United States, regardless of who wins, could turn violent– which is scary on many levels. I feel like the end of our democracy could be at hand. In some ways this can feel fecund with possibilities for new worlds, but the idea also feels rife with more suffering and intensified harm against our most marginalized communities, my communities.

One of the only things I know for sure is that I don’t know. I don’t know the perfect thing to do to be ready for what’s next. I don’t know what’s to come, and that creates a lot of anxiety and intensity around trying to figure it out and make plans, trying to prepare for the future.

I’m learning that when I focus only on all of these questions and all of that uncertainty, I miss what’s happening right now. Today. The alive things that are worth fighting for as a movement. The joy of seeing a plant bloom, or hearing a story from my child. Harvesting the last of the basil from a window box, or making sofrito or jam or preserving food for the winter. This year because of the pandemic there were blessings that I got to notice by being in one place for so many days in a row: being able to see the change of seasons, the cycles of plants, the daily rituals of home, continuous time with my child.

Right now, I am working on restoring balance in my body and spirit. Balancing plans for the semester, plans to vote early, plans for our organization and the future that I hope and wish for our community …alongside what I need for right now, what’s on this week’s to do list, making food for my family, getting outside and moving my body.

So now that equinox is reminding me of balance, I’m trying to hold my anxieties about an uncertain future in check with the many things I do know for certain. Today the dishes have to get washed. I have the power to make someone I love smile. I can choose to move and care for my body. I can notice little joys and enjoy little comforts.

And in terms of the future, alongside my civic duty to vote and my ethical responsibility to continue to contribute to change and demand justice, I am orienting my spirit to listen for what I can do to be ready for what comes next. We can’t all grow our own food or live off the grid, but we can each prepare in some way by living into whatever our talents and curiosities implore us to learn, and listening for where we are needed. As for myself, I’m learning more about plant medicines and teas and herbal remedies that grow in my yard. It is not the only solution, but it is one small thing that I can contribute to our collective skills and knowledge.

And also, I am continually in prayer for our planet, for our leaders, for our families and the well-being of our young ones and older ones, and for the healing and power of our communities.

Every day we take those prayers and manifest them in small and large ways through our actions toward a reality where every life is full of dignity, justice, kindness, safety, possibility, and love. 

This is how I hold fast to hope for our future. Even when I can’t control everything (or sometimes anything), I commit to finding a balance for myself that keeps me spiritually grounded in our struggle— regardless of what’s next.

Rev. Alba Onofrio is Soulforce’s Spiritual Strategist, and serves as our Co-Executive Director. You can read more of their writing on the blog: https://www.soulforce.org/blog/author/Rev.-Alba-Onofrio.